Starbucked
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- HUF1,990.00
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- HUF1,990.00
Publisher Description
STARBUCKED is the first book to explore the incredible rise of the Starbucks Corporation and the caffeine-crazy culture that fuelled its success. Part Fast Food Nation, part social history, STARBUCKED combines investigative heft with witty cultural observation. How did Starbucks become an international juggernaut? What made the company so beloved that more than 40 million customers visit every week, yet so loathed that protestors have firebombed its stores? Why did Americans suddenly become willing to pay $4.50 for a cup of coffee? And why did the world follow? Taylor Clark provides an objective, meticulously reported look at how Starbucks manipulates psyches and social habits to snare loyal customers, and why many of the things we think we know about the coffee chain are false.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
There's a double shot of skepticism in this account of Starbucks' ascendancy as "a permanent fixture in the global landscape" written by Clark, a Portland-based journalist, who's been mulling over Starbucks ever since the coffeehouse chain opened three branches in his small Oregon hometown. His coverage begins with a Seattle trio who set out to emulate the high-quality coffee of the California-based Peet's chain, before Howard Schultz took over the company and laid plans for its massive expansion. While Clark grudgingly admires Starbucks' ability to repackage coffee as "beverage entertainment" for a "hyperprosperous society in search of emotional soothing," there's a lot he doesn't like about the company. He's convinced that Starbucks "diminishes the world's diversity" by ruthlessly outmaneuvering local competition on a global scale, and dubs the baristas' work as "a textbook McJob." Even the quality of the coffee, he says, has gone downhill. Though Clark loses some of his focus by trying to rope in so many arguments against Starbucks, overall, his dubious perspective on one of the modern world's most ubiquitous icons is just frothy enough to prove entertaining.
